Venetia’s

The road with shops
either side rises up the hill –
Wind blows from the east, is wintery.

Cut-backs reduce our self-image, injure our emotions.
Shall the cafe be noted and walked past, or entered?
Branches sway out, waver, are blown apart.

Inside, light looks in – a long, low, wintery slant.
X-rays can show the condition of the bones,
but what about our hearts?

Couples, individuals sit occupied at tables.
Home-made cakes are arranged
on a stand, in a three-tiered circle.

Kindness is shown in small things:
the waitress with black eyes, a touch on the arm,
the tilting of a head.

Leaflets, scraps of paper hang on the wall:
a gardening angel will rescue your garden,
lessons in playing a guitar.

What is called for
is the assembly of a smaller but newer self.
Branches reach, trembling, back together.

Sara Boyes

published in Envoi, Issue 169, Cinnamon Press, ISSN 0013-9394

The Handkerchief Tree

Even as we enter the garden
in the heart of the city
one gate behind us closes.

Tall buildings, trees, black railings
loom and press in:
the world is turning away from the sun.

Against a towering brick wall
the handkerchief tree
bitter green leaves

bedecked with white fluttering bracts,
part of the rare flower,
is hemmed in yet flourishing.

Dusk is falling, damp rising up:
we stand in front of the tree
thanking the one who brought us.

The gate on the far side is open,
the park-keeper, pale face anxious,
comes forwards, to close the garden.

In all too brief a span of time –
dusk darkening trees and corners – we leave.
Behind us the keeper locks the gate.

Sara Boyes

published in anthology, There Are No Strangers, 2015, New Gallery Books, ISBN: 978-09531-781-55

Friend

I clip phlox in the garden
withered into brown dry stems, and ache
for you on a Sunday evening in the Midlands,
a walk along canal and country lane.

I prune growing boughs of forsythia,
the sage bush: dusty dark layering underneath,
recall a meal in a pub round a table
then, back with you to talk by a fire.

I take out weeds, move self-seeded marigolds
growing too early, too late. But you –
strong, sturdy, boisterous, with whom
ideas were discussed, books shared – I give space to.

Your roots have grown into my heart,
and your branches, your cherry leaves,
your mad profusion of pink cherry flowers
come out every spring in my imagination.

Sara Boyes

published in anthology, There Are No Strangers, 2015, New Gallery Books, ISBN: 978-09531-781-55

Miracle

It was as if her powdery, wrinkled face,
her well-chosen plum tweed skirt,
her beret perched on her white hair,
suddenly swept up in a dramatic swish
to reveal a cellar, in their pub, at the start of the war.

‘It was a miracle’, she said.
Her baby, placed between crates of beer –
lifted clear by the blast of the bomb
to a ledge beneath the cellar door
through which men lifted barrels.

Here the baby was, uninjured,
but for one bruise on his nail.
While she, pinned under rubble
and her mother, in a far corner, by a beam
trapped, and her father, in the garage
in such a state regarding his wife, his daughter,
his grandson, locked up by the wardens.

Old though she was, she fixed me
her eye all the while regarding mine –
‘Nobody knows
how nearly we came to death,
in the war, the bombs falling’.